Now with more coherency.

Today is Anzac Day and it is important to take the time today to think about
the men and women who have served their country as a member of the Australian
defence force. Similarly, it is important to remember those that are currently
serving, some of whom are deployed to hostile locations ((Diggers wounded in
Iraq blast)).

Regardless of whether you think they should be there or not, they have
volunteered to serve their country and are putting their lives on the line for
the rest of us.

Recently, we’ve been inundated with comment spam. Of course, none of this spam
has ever made it as far as getting on the website, and only a very small
fraction has made it into our comment moderation queue. At the time of writing
this article, 2,599 spam comments have been prevented. Most of these have
occured in the last month.

With no spam getting through, it almost resembles are poor attempt at a
distributed denial of service (DDOS)
attack. It is certainly more effective in this vain, than in attempting to
create a Google Bomb to boost
their internet search rankings. The spam queue is reviewed daily to check for
false-positives ((Legitimate comments being marked as spam)), of which their
have been none so far. Fortunately the spam is so easy to recognise that the
likelihood of false-positives is insanely low.Thanks must go to the team at
Akismet, for their excellent comment-spam filter.

What I don’t understand is why the spammers have not created more intelligent
spam-bots, to maximise their impact. Surely it would not be hard to detect
whether your spam attempt was successful, and if not, to move on to another
site. Personally I’d rather Jack
Bauer head up a team to “take out”
the spammers, but at least intelligent spam-bots would know to leave this site
alone.

Here’s why. Intellectual Property is a funny thing. Not funny ha-ha, but funny
in the sense that it’s hard for people to think of ownership over an idea.
This problem comes from the ease at which an idea can be transferred much more
quickly, through duplication. The creator of the idea hasn’t lost the idea,
they still have it, but suddenly they have a competitor that has had no
initial production costs, only duplication costs, which are extremely low
thanks to the internet and the ease at which digital copies can be made.

That’s not to say we should reduce the ease at which digital copies can be
made, or shut down the internet. Let’s say there are two stores next to each
other. One sells pirated material and the other sells licensed material, with
a portion of the profits going to the original artist. The shop that sells
pirated material is able to sell it at a lower cost because their costs per
copy are so low. In this case the products are identical. If there was no laws
against piracy, the pirated store would clearly be in a better position. Only
consumers that are genuinely concerned about the original artist, or who are
frightened of pirates are likely to purchase the legitimate copy. Little or no
profit makes it back to the artist, so they stop producing the material and
get a boring desk job. Pretty soon, it becomes apparent that there is no money
in the industry and therefore everything shuts down.

Before attacking this scenario, I admit that I have assumed that the only
source of income for the artist is through the sales, which isn’t necessarily
always the case, but that doesn’t mean that we can say that the artist isn’t
entitled to this source of income. It’s also not supposed to be a real
scenario, but simply a tool to show the extreme case of piracy and how it can
clearly be detrimental to the original artist.

Some say that licensed material is overpriced. However the price is set by the
market and competition needs to come from other artists, not from someone who
has no initial production costs. Some would say that the prices are fixed and
that collusion between production companies is keeping the price of this
material high. It doesn’t change the fact that if you want the material, you
need to pay the asking price.Let’s look at this from a different angle. DVDs
have compulsory copyright screens and ads that can’t always be skipped to get
to the content. As someone who has paid to watch the content, this can get
frustrating, especially when the copyright messages are then shown in about a
dozen languages. Pirated DVDs are not forced to have these screens. Suddenly
pirates are able to produce what is to the end-consumer a better product than
that able to be purchased legitimately. As Scott
Adams has commented, it is impossible to
compete with something that’s free. Surely it must be harder to compete with
something that is free and less annoying.

The Internet has torn down the traditional national borders for information.
In this context, pirates operate without competition from the original artist.
A consumer, eager to see the artist’s latest work may not be able to access it
within their country legally, so instead seek out pirates, more than willing
to provide the service. In this case, a market exists which is being ignored.
Prior to the internet, distributing media worldwide would be costly and stock
would often sit in an inventory unsold. With the internet and broadband
capabilities, it is now possible to set up a world-wide store without the
costs that have been involved previously.

Maybe the author of the original material should have the right to make people
in different geographic regions wait. Perhaps this discrimination is okay.
However, people are impatient and they will seek out alternatives if they feel
they have to.

Whilst I don’t think it should be necessary to compete with pirates on price,
it makes business sense to at least compete with them on product functionality
and geographic availability. People will continue to get material from
pirates, but at least you’ll provide consumers and opportunity to do the right
thing, while quenching their information lust.

This week reports trickled in of yet another engagement within the small group
of people collectively referred to as Friends.The initial tip-off was made by
a party wishing to remain anonymous and was given off the record. Naturally
The Mill could not proceed (and retain journalistic integrity) until the
story was confirmed. Fortunately, confirmation was made yesterday by
Will that he had indeed proposed to Alison, and
importantly she accepted.

Given the increasing number of people who visit The Mill for proposal advice
((In March, 37.5% of visitors who came via search engines used the phrase
‘when to propose’, with approximately 10% using a variant on the phrase. So
far this month, over half of visitors via search engines have come seeking
proposal advice)), it is important to share as many details as possible about
the engagement. Please be aware that further information is still forth-coming
and The Mill will endeavour to follow up on any further leads it may
receive.

Throwing caution to the wind was how Will
decided to proceed, proposing at the start of an overseas holiday. This risk
paid good dividends for both Will and Alison,
who were able to treat the entire vacation as an engagement honeymoon,
building memories that will last a lifetime. Originally, The Mill posted an
article ((When To Propose)) suggesting making the proposal at the end of the vacation,
although Will’s experience has shown that it is
not necessary to follow The Mill’s suggestions to the letter.

So, for all of our visitors who are seeking ways to tie the knot with that
special someone, be sure to use The Mill and any other resource you may find
for inspiration. It is not necessary to follow advice of this type verbatim,
indeed it is next to impossible to provide universal advice that will suit
every situation. Hopefully you know the person you are wishing to propose to
better than The Mill and you can use that insight to improve the odds of
getting the answer you want.

If you have a proposal story that you’d like to see on The Mill leave a
comment on a relevant post and we’ll get in touch with you to produce a
feature article.

Finally, congratulations must go out to Will and
Alison. Everyone here at The Mill wishes you the very best.

Let’s talk more about Carbon Dioxide (CO2) as it is right up there in the
leading ingredients for global warming (there are other greenhouse gases such
as methane which are even worse). Last weekend I was reading an article in
Time discussing how the Academy Awards were offsetting their carbon dioxide
emissions by purchasing carbon credits. The author rightfully pointed out that
purchasing carbon credits didn’t reduce their individual emissions one bit.

That’s right, purchasing a Carbon Credit will not suddenly make the carbon
dioxide you emit disappear. Instead, it guarantees that an equivalent amount
of carbon dioxide will not be emitted by providing green power to someone
else. Therefore, the net effect worldwide is a reduction in carbon dioxide
emissions.

Carbon Credits are in no way the final solution to the problem, but rather
they act as a catalyst for the change that must occur. They create a market
for green power without the complexities of only supplying it to the people
willing to pay for it. As this market grows, the green energy companies can
take advantage of economies of scale to reduce the overall cost of green
power.

Carbon Credits are useful so long as there is energy that can be supplied by
renewable sources that would have otherwise have been supplied by carbon
dioxide emitting sources. Ideally as renewable power becomes more prevalent,
old coal power stations will be closed down.

Anyone can buy a carbon credit. Sites like Climate
Friendly (Australian Site) provide tools to
help you work out how many carbon credits you need to offset your carbon
output. Remember, your carbon output doesn’t change, but you will be
sponsoring a reduction of other’s carbon output by the equivalent amount.
Virgin Blue has recently announced a plan to allow passengers to
offset their carbon dioxide emissions as part of their ticket. Or you can try
to go directly to the source with companies like Jack
Green which provide power supplied from
renewable sources.

The Australian government has unfortunately not yet set targets for carbon
dioxide emissions. I can only hope that when the results of the federal task
force on carbon emissions are released next month a decision can be made. It
is troubling that the government’s plans seems more based on working around
the problem, than addressing its root causes with an investment of $170
million being spent on a “Climate Change Adaptation Centre”, tasked with the
job of investigating “the effects on coastlines and the atmosphere”. At a
guess, recommendations of snorkels for low-lying coastal areas will be the
pinnacle of this centre’s achievements. ((PM refuses to set target for carbon
emissions - ABC))